IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v45y2017i5p678-700.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Searching for a Tolerable Tax

Author

Listed:
  • Denvil Duncan
  • Venkata Nadella
  • Ashley Clark
  • Stacey Giroux
  • John Graham

Abstract

A growing number of states are pursuing strategies to combat declining fuel tax revenue and fund road construction and maintenance, including the use of sales taxes, income taxes, and tolls; raising fuel tax rates; and adopting road mileage user fees. We use data from a nationally representative survey to compare public acceptability of a mileage user fee with each of these alternative revenue mechanisms. We find that support for the revenue options varies from 13.4 percent for income taxes to 33.8 percent for tolls, with higher gasoline tax rates, mileage user fees, and sales taxes in the middle. The evidence also points to stronger intensity of opposition than intensity of support across all alternatives. Finally, we find that, conditional on opposition to the mileage user fee, public acceptability is highest for tolls, followed by higher fuel taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes. Policy implications are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Denvil Duncan & Venkata Nadella & Ashley Clark & Stacey Giroux & John Graham, 2017. "Searching for a Tolerable Tax," Public Finance Review, , vol. 45(5), pages 678-700, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:45:y:2017:i:5:p:678-700
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://pfr.sagepub.com/content/45/5/678.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:45:y:2017:i:5:p:678-700. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.